oath forger 01 - oath forger Read online

  Then it’s the spindly guy’s turn. Same routine. He bites his lip so hard, I half expect it to bleed.

  The agent cleans up, tossing the used needles into a disposal hole that opens and closes on the wall, all by itself. A shiny needle cap drops to the floor and rolls toward me. I pick it up, and without thinking, shove it into my pocket.

  We’re still wearing the same clothing we received the day before. Tan pants with a tan top, some soft, loose material that looks pristine even after we slept in it. Probably some high-tech space material. I wonder what it’s made of. Never mind. I have more important questions.

  “How did you learn English?” I ask Agent Woman as we pile into another pod to leave the hospital.

  “You aren’t the first ones from your planet we have rescued from pirates.”

  No way they’ve rescued any earthlings from the pirates. Nobody has ever come back.

  My throat is suddenly dry. “What happened to the other people you liberated?”

  “They were sent to the Federal Institute for Interstellar Studies.”

  Her tone is probably meant to be reassuring. I’m not reassured. Especially, when she adds, “We must have a lot more information about your people before the Federation can decide what to do with your Earth.”

  I stare at her as a mix of emotions swirls through me. Okay, mostly fury. They need more information before they will save us? Is she freaking kidding me? “I’m ready for the hearing.”

  I have plenty I want to tell these freaking Federation politicians and the freaking Krek Koah. Like, get your damn act together and start saving my planet!

  Except, the hearing turns out nothing like I expect.

  We file into the enormous room, Agent Woman leading us to a round table in the middle. Three hundred people—I’m using the term loosely—are seated on semi-circular, raised platforms, all dressed in purple robes, looking down on us. They’re all different in shape, size, and color, yet mostly humanoid as far as I can tell. I can’t tell a lot, because my attention is glued to the man who sits straight ahead, on a platform of his own, above all others.

  The Krek Koah. The president, king, warlord.

  Holy shit.

  He’s larger than the largest man I had ever seen on Earth. His shoulders are nearly twice as wide as mine. He is wearing a body-hugging suit, some kind of dark blue space material I’ve never seen before. The fabric literally seems to absorb light. His muscle definition is...

  Clearly visible, even from as far away as where I’m standing.

  Hair the color of indigo spills down to the middle of his back, the kind of hair they used to call a lion’s mane on Earth. Straight nose, a jaw that looks like it had been cut from granite. But it’s the eyes that render me unable to breathe. His eye color matches his hair, and his gaze is locked on mine. And—here is the weird part—I can feel him in the room. I could almost swear I can hear his heartbeat. My awareness of him is...unearthly.

  Oh God, I’m cracking. The stress of the abduction has done me in. Next, I will be crying in a heap on the floor like Dee.

  Krek Koah stands, a fierce expression on his face.

  The guy is seriously huge. And not a little scary.

  The buzz in the room immediately dies. Every single person falls silent. All attention is on him.

  Without moving his gaze from mine, he says, “I need this room cleared.”

  Here is where I’m seriously glad for the translator in my neck—even with the killer headache I feel coming—because if I didn’t understand what he said, I would think it was ‘Off with their heads.’

  And I’m pretty sure I would pee my pants.

  All the politicians file for the exits, no questions, no protest.

  President, king, warlord.

  Agent Woman hadn’t been kidding.

  I’m ready to go. I’m backing away already. I need to catch the agents and talk to them about our return to Earth.

  “Not you,” Krek Koah pronounces, looking straight at me.

  My throat works to swallow, but I have no spit left in my mouth.

  I’m frozen to the spot while he descends the steps. His boots slap hard on the stone floor as he strides towards me. The cavernous room empties, save the two of us. He stops so close to me that if I reached out, I could touch him.

  I’m so not going to touch him. I don’t have a death wish.

  He smells like...ozone—a sharply clean, heady scent that makes me lightheaded.

  A panicked little voice chants what-does-he-want-from-me, what-does-he-want-from-me, in my head.

  Anger sits at the depth of his indigo gaze. And next to anger, wonder. And next to wonder, hunger.

  Suddenly, my entire body is vibrating on the inside. My throat is too tight to talk. I think I’m going to faint.

  Then he says two words, words that make no sense to me whatsoever, but seem to fill him with a deep satisfaction.

  “Oath Forger.”

  Chapter Four

  IF I THOUGHT Krek Koah’s appearance was overwhelming, his voice... God, his voice.

  Deep, mesmerizing, resonant, it vibrates along my skin and makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

  What’s wrong with me? An aftereffect of the sedative they gave us with dinner? How can they just drug people? I’d like to tell this guy about a little thing called consent, but I still can’t get a word out.

  I’m in shock. It’s the whole alien abduction thing. I should have cried and let the stress out like Dee. Or talked it out like Jess. Instead, I bottled up my emotions, and now I’m losing it.

  “When did you arrive?” he demands. “Why has nobody told me that you would be here? Why did you not go straight to Merim and announce your presence?”

  He speaks as if I should know what he’s talking about.

  “I was kidnapped by pirates,” I say the only thing I’m sure of at the moment.

  The transformation in him is instant. And, once again, I can’t breathe.

  His entire body readies for attack, his muscles bunching. Some serious muscles. Am I drooling? Do I care?

  Until now, he was president, king, warlord, but now he’s a killing machine. His eyes are as sharp as the shards of metal I used to collect on Earth’s surface, his voice a ragged growl that echoes in the room. “I. Will. Kill. Them.”

  Okay, so he’s not just an intergalactic hottie. He’s a homicidal intergalactic hottie.

  Drat. Nothing in life is perfect.

  I don’t dare move. I understand that his dark fury is not directed at me, but it still feels like staring into the face of a roaring tiger, from six inches away, because, yes, he’s right in front of me now.

  My knees wobble. He scoops me off my feet, and then I’m in his massive arms, and he’s carrying me off like a barbarian.

  “Please put me down.” Or not. Really, I’m okay either way.

  “You are under my protection.”

  Okay then.

  You know what? I’m not going to fight him on this one. Because, hey, yesterday at this time, I was headed to some slave market, the property of pirates. And now I’m under the protection of a guy I suspect is probably the most powerful man on the planet.

  I am A-Okay with being under his protection.

  So until I figure out what the hell is going on, I’m going to shut up and celebrate that I’m not going to be ground into some exotic human humus. Or worse.

  “Where are we going?” I risk the question despite his ready-to-murder demeanor.

  “To my spaceship.”

  A man with his own spaceship who seems willing to help me. Looks like my plan is coming along right on schedule. But because previous life experiences have not made me optimistic, I ask, just for clarification, “Will you take me back to Earth? Could we please take the others as well? The pirates took at least a hundred people.”

  He stops as if he’s hit an invisible wall. His gaze snaps to mine. “You do not want to go to Merim?”

  “What is Merim?”

>   He stares at me as if I’ve grown a second head.

  Hey, who’s the alien here?

  “Merim is the capital of the Federation.”

  “Then no, I don’t want to go there. I mean, unless it’s like a rest stop between here and Earth. But if it’s in the opposite direction, I’d rather just go home, if that could be arranged.”

  Again with the look of complete bafflement, now edged with horror. “You refuse your destiny?”

  “Returning home is my first choice. No offense.”

  “And let the world fall apart?” He sounds stricken with disappointment.

  I bet he’s not often stricken. It looks terrible on him.

  “The world will fall apart if I don’t go to Merim with you?”

  Now he looks aghast. “The world is falling apart already.”

  Fine. I can’t exactly argue with that.

  After a long moment, he says in a suspiciously patient tone, as if he’s working on being reasonable, “Come to Merim and meet The Five, all of us together.”

  He sets me down with reluctance. The muscles in his face tighten. “If you think you cannot accept me... At least meet with them. I am only one of The Five.”

  There’s a sandstorm in his eyes, and I get the distinct feeling that he’s being sandpapered from the inside.

  He looks at me as if his life—or, hey, the continued existence of the galaxy—depends on me.

  Merim. The capital of the Federation. A federation which is possibly ruled by five presidents/kings/warlords who might not know how bad things are on Earth, or exactly how much damage the pirates are causing there. But if I meet them... If I tell them...

  “And if I can’t accept The Five, you will take me home?”

  Maybe he thinks I’m the president/queen/warlady of Earth? Maybe he thinks I was on my way to Merim to forge an alliance when I was kidnapped?

  He clearly doesn’t know I’m just a no-account scavenger. Yet whatever he thinks I am, it has earned me his instant protection. So, I’m just going to go with that.

  “You don’t think you can accept The Five?” He looks at me as if I shoved a knife into his heart, and I’m slowly twisting it. But then he says, his voice ragged, “If you cannot accept us, I will take you home. You have my word as krek.”

  “In that case, I will go to Merim with you, Koah.”

  The sandstorm in his eyes dies down. The indigo turns nearly black. The anger/wonder/hunger becomes just hunger.

  “My name is Ava,” I tell him. “Ava Smith.”

  His eyes flare at Smith, as if the name has some profound significance. I don’t dare ask. I’m at my limit, for the moment.

  He reaches out to take me into his arms again. Muscles bunch and shift. The whole thing is incredibly distracting. Yet I manage to quickly step back.

  “I’m going to walk.”

  Again, he gets that blade-in-the-heart look, but he inclines his head. “As you wish, my Ava.”

  I’m not going to kid you, that my Ava does things to me, coming from a guy like him.

  The men at Dallas Colony are okay. Some are handsome, some are not. Some are kind, some are cruel. Koah is... Compared to the men I’ve met before him, Koah is a man from a whole different solar system.

  He has a private pod, I realize as soon as we leave the building and walk into an attached hangar different from the one I first saw when I arrived here. Instead of being elongated, this pod is shorter, an oversized platinum egg. He also has his private guard, which seems pretty superfluous. I don’t see what those two could do that Koah couldn’t do on his own.

  We take his pod—plush as a nest, fancy upholstery all the way, no plastic seating here—to his spaceship. The pod enters the ship’s hold, so, once again, I miss seeing even a sliver of the planet. I’m not disappointed for long. I’m too busy gawking.

  There’s a stark beauty to Koah’s ship. It’s nothing like the blank walls of the cargo hold of the pirate ship had been. Here, every surface is covered in controls and display screens. I’m inside a finely tuned machine.

  I’m impressed. Under different circumstances, I would love to show all this to Lily. She’d be ridiculously excited. Those old sci-fi movies in the archives are her favorites.

  Movies are no longer made on Earth. Nobody has that kind of money, and Hollywood is a heap of rubble. So we watch the old flicks and shows over and over. That’s how we know so much about the past.

  The command deck on Koah’s ship is a curved space with eight chairs, but none of the crew are sitting. Most of the wall above the controls is a display panel that shows a star map. I recognize nothing.

  “Where are we?” I hold my breath for the answer.

  “Vascan.”

  “That’s the planet?”

  Koah nods.

  “And the galaxy?” I ask.

  “Rivat.”

  Neither of those names tell me anything. “Is Rivat the same galaxy where my Earth is?”

  He nods again.

  A little of the tension inside me relaxes. “We call the galaxy the Milky Way.”

  I fall silent when I realize that the others on the command deck are watching us with interest.

  The flight crew consists of three men and three women. Everybody wears dark blue uniforms, but with different markings over their right upper arms. I stick out in my hospital khakis.

  “Ava Smith.” Krek Koah introduces me to the flight crew.

  Eyes go wide at Smith.

  What? Why do they do that?

  I don’t have time to wonder for more than a second, because next he says those two words again.

  “Oath Forger.”

  The entire crew, along with his guards, drop to half-knee and bow to me.

  Okay, whatever an Oath Forger is, it’s going to be me. Totally me. Because if I understand one thing in this chaos, it’s this: the Oath Forger shit is going to keep me alive. People seriously seem to respect it.

  Koah calls out the rest of the introductions. “Captain Embrin, officers Haras, Irgina, Roj, Gowen, and Dai.” At each, a different crew member drops his or her head again in a bow. Koah then turns to his guards. “Etchin and Nilo.”

  Instead of bowing, they raise their right fists and tap them to the middle of their chests. A different way to show respect? Because they’re a different branch of military than the crew? I haven’t the foggiest.

  Captain Embrin, the woman with the most markings on her uniform, clears her throat. “Should I request an escort of fighters?”

  “An escort would draw attention to us,” Koah tells her while keeping his gaze on me, as if he’s unable to look away. “Too many ships will let the enemy know that we are transporting something valuable. We are better off going now and going fast.”

  Captain Embrin gives a brief nod, trying not to be obvious about watching me from the corner of her eye.

  Koah steps closer to me, then gestures to an opening in the wall next to us. “I’ll show you the rest of the ship.”

  Everyone stays on half-knee until we leave. I try not to gape. This kind of stuff could seriously go to a girl’s head.

  The ship is small; crews’ quarters, some kind of med unit with instruments, kitchen... God, the kitchen. The walls are lined with see-through cabinets from floor to ceiling, and each is stocked with food. I’ve never seen this much food in one place outside of the colony’s underground market.

  My stomach growls.

  “Please help yourself to anything you’d like, at any time.” Koah is still watching me, as if he never wants to look away. “Consider everything you see yours.”

  I’m in love.

  With this room.

  Like seriously. The availability of this much food brings tears to my eyes. If you’d never gone hungry, this is not something that you’ll understand. But to me? This room is survival.

  My heart racing, I look at the packages, but I can barely read English, let alone Alien. “What would you recommend?”

  He pulls a red and black foil p
ackage, shakes it, tugs a red tab, and waits for five seconds. When he opens the package, fragrant steam escapes. It’s some kind of self-heating packaging.

  I approve. “This is an invention we could really use on Earth.”

  I’ve eaten an insane amount of nasty, cold stuff over the years. Not that I’m complaining, not when millions have starved.

  I expect more green goop, but the scent that teases my nose is mouthwatering. I have to fight not to fall on the food like some ravenous beast.

  We go to the table, and he sets my lunch in front of me, then taps the tabletop. An eating utensil materializes from a hidden compartment, something between a fork and a spoon. At least I don’t stare at it like an idiot. I’ve already used these at the alien hospital.

  I take the first bite. He watches intently, as if I’m going to score him on how much I like my lunch.

  “Savory.” I smack my lips.

  Something like beef. Sooo incredibly good. The last time I ate non-synthetic beef was when I was a kid. On my tenth birthday, I think, Lily and I shared a hamburger.

  I swallow the meat too fast, so I take another spoonful and this time I hold it on my tongue, letting myself savor the incredible burst of flavors. My eyes close, my head tips back, and I moan with sheer pleasure.

  When I open my eyes, I am incinerated.

  Koah is leaning half-across the table, his indigo gaze blazing. The hunger on his face is all-consuming, and for a second I freeze, because no man has ever looked at me like this before, as if I matter more than his next breath of air. As if I’m the most important person in the universe to him.

  I must be reading him wrong. Maybe space travel is scrambling my mind. Maybe the air on the ship is too thin.

  “The food is really good,” I say to break the tension, my voice shaky.

  He is immediately on his feet, heading back to the cabinets. “Would you like another?”

  “No!” I swallow. “Thank you.”

  The portion is more than generous. I can barely imagine having two meals on the same day, let alone at one sitting.

  He stays where he is, almost as if he doesn’t trust himself to come closer. The entire time I eat, that intensity remains on his face.